Streep & Cameron Turn Attention to Environment During Oscars Week

Last week I blogged about the event NRDC hosted with James Cameron and Elvis Mitchell at Fox Studios to bring attention to the environmental message behind the highest-grossing movie in history, Avatar. We now have video clips on the event online. It’s fascinating to watch Cameron talk about the politics, the process the environmental passion behind Avatar.

Cameron dispelled the notion many seem to have that Fox was uncomfortable with the film ideologically. Their only concern, Cameron said, was that a movie with so strong an environmental theme might not be a good financial bet. It’s good to see that canard laid to rest – buried under two billion dollars in gross receipts.

Cameron also talked about being humbled by nature as he made Avatar. After convening some of the world’s top visual artists to create new (imaginary) life forms to inhabit the fictional planet of Pandora, it turned out (again and again) that actual specimens from nature were more beautiful and bizarre than anything he and his team could invent.

Ultimately, “Avatar asks as all to be warriors for the earth,” Cameron said, and talked about the importance of multiplying our power by working through organizations like NRDC.

You can hear the Elvis Mitchell’s entire conversation with James Cameron on a special online edition of KCRW’s The Treatment this Friday, March 5.

In this week leading up to the Oscars, NRDC also is featuring an interview with multiple Academy Award-winners (and 2010 Best Actress nominee) Meryl Streep, about her role as an environmental health advocate. The interview is by the NRDC’s Wendy Gordon.

Streep has worked with NRDC for more than 30 years to raise awareness about weaknesses in the regulation of pesticides used in food production. Streep and Gordon created Mothers & Others, a group that supported NRDC in the fight for tougher pesticide residue standards, which, thanks to a law passed in the late 1990s, would protect particularly vulnerable sub-populations such as infants and young children. Read the full interview on NRDC’s Simple Steps web site and hear her talk about children’s health in the following audio.